TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR THE TRANSLATION OF THE WORKS OF CYPRIAN NORWID (AND WHAT CAME FROM THEM, OR, ON THE TRANSLATIONS OF DANUTA BORCHARDT)

For a good translation of Norwid's works one needs extensive knowledge ? not only of the translated text, but also the whole of the author's works and ideas. Norwid might well be the world's only writer whose language is described in specialist dictionaries and whose works and thoughts have been and still are being researched by successive outstanding Norwidologists1, supported since the 1980s by various research institutions and a devoted scholarly journal. In 1983 the annual Studia Norwidiana was born, which became "the organ of all norwidologists" and which contributes to a "deepening of the knowledge of the works of one of the greatest, but also most difficult Polish writers, continually elaborating neglected research areas and displaying the universal values of his so original [...] writing."2 Similar aims, as well as the preparation of a complete critical edition of Norwid's works and the compilation of a specialist library3 were the goals of the Zaklad Badan nad Tworczosci^ Cypriana Norwida4 [Cyprian Norwid Literature Research Department], founded at the Catholic University of Lublin in 1985. The Pracownia J^zyka Cypriana Norwida [Cyprian Norwid Language Research Department], called to life at the University of Warsaw in 1983, undertook the task of a full lexicographical compilation of the poet's language,5 while